"monument" for V. Tatlin

This artwork is not available to buy as a custom printThis artwork is not available to buy as a custom print

About this artwork

This work is one of the first in a series made between 1964 and 1990, dedicated to the Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin, in which Flavin organized sequences of white fluorescent tube lights of varying sizes. In 1965 Flavin wrote that the series ‘memorialises Vladimir Tatlin, the great revolutionary.’ They are among Flavin’s most austere sculptures, not only in their symmetrical arrangements but also in their use of cool white tubes, which contrast with the acid bright colours in his other works. Flavin described these sculptures as ‘monuments’ partly as a nod towards Tatlin’s unrealized, ambitious 'Monument to the Third International', 1919-20 and partly as an ironic statement, aware of the disparity between his modest materials and the grandeur of traditional sculpture.

Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin

American artist Dan Flavin began his career as a meteorologist and had almost no formal art training. He studied art history at Columbia University, New York in the late-1950s and made his first light work in 1963, fixing a fluorescent light tube to a wall at a 45 degree angle.…